
Book 



PRESENTED KY 



RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 
OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 



RIGHT AND WRONG 
UNVEILINGS OF THE 
SPIRITUAL WORLD 



BY 

REV. JOHN GODDARD 



* 



NEW-CHURCH BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

3 West 29TH Street, New York City 
1912 






Copyright, 1912, by 
THE NEW-CHURCH BOARD OF PUBLICATION 



Author 



? Ml 19 1 3 



Press of J J. Little & Ives Co 
New York 



INTRODUCTORY 

The purpose of this little book may be briefly 
told. 

The first chapter, furnishing its title, is pri- 
marily intended to remove any existing impres- 
sion in the reader's mind that Swedenborg's un- 
veilings of the unseen world are in some way 
related to what is known as Spiritualism, or, 
more properly speaking, Spiritism. Swedenborg 
speaks as a Revelator, a man of God, or, in his 
own words, as "the Servant of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." He comes, not to add to or detract from, 
the Bible messages of the past, but to open up 
the deeper meaning of those revelations for a 
new and rational or manhood age of human 
development. 

Every prophet of God in the past has had a 
more or less clear vision of realities beyond this 
world. This is the first great fact of prophecy. 
Another great fact is that God speaks, not man, 
nor spirit, nor angel. The third great fact is 
that God reveals, whenever he speaks, a message 
for daily and higher life, not chiefly to satisfy 
curiosity, or overcome scepticism by sensuous 
proof of another world, or even to comfort us 
in our affliction; much less to minister to our 
bodily health, or lead us to greater financial 



INTRODUCTORY 

prosperity, or for any other earthly or selfish 
benefit. Swedenborg is always in harmony with 
these three distinguishing features of God's seers 
and prophets. To him, as to them, "the word 
of the Lord came, saying." If he tells more 
than they about the unseen world, it is because 
the world needs and can incorporate into spiritual 
character more and deeper knowledge. And this 
knowledge, as now revealed, is of such a kind 
as to harmonize with human freedom — not to 
overpersuade, nor hypnotize, but to lead to a 
deeper, truer, more rational, more practical and 
yet more spiritual life than the world has ever 
known. 

The second, third and fourth chapters, respec- 
tively, treat of the spiritual world from the point 
of view (i) of common or intuitive perception; 
(2) of Swedenborg's philosophy as illustrated 
by modern science especially; and (3) of Swe- 
denborg's personal experience, "from things 
heard and seen." 

These chapters, first given in the ordinary 
course of pastoral duty, are published by request. 
That they may be of some little service, not only 
in correcting erroneous impressions, but in help- 
ing to establish a rational belief in the wondrous 
fact that death is only the gateway to endless 
life, and to help to so build up character here 
that the future may reveal the Divine presence 
and His peace, is the hope and prayer of 

The Author. 



PART I 

RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 
OF THE UNSEEN WORLD 



RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS OF 
THE UNSEEN WORLD 

A belief in a life after death is universal. It 
is found among tribes which have no written 
revelation, as well as among all others. It may 
in part be due to a tradition handed down from 
an ancient revelation, and partly perhaps to what 
are now known as supernormal experiences. But 
back of all this there must be something which, 
for lack of a better term, we may call the "in- 
stinct of immortality." 

But this instinct is not enough. It often at- 
tends the grossest superstitions and immoralities. 
Divine revelation is needed for its guidance. 
While revelation cannot rise very far above the 
conditions of the people who receive it, still it 
has always contained ideal teachings in advance 
of their conditions, which have served to pre- 
serve their spiritual life until a new revelation, 
better adapted to those conditions, could be given. 

Divine revelation always contains two distinct 
features. It involves, first of all, more or less 
of an opening of the unseen world before the 
senses of the Revelator. And, again, it involves 



4 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

a message from God to His children, containing 
new and uplifting laws of right living. Before 
the eyes of the inspired prophet, Revelator, or 
man of God, there has been a clear vision of 
supersensuous realities ; the Divine voice has been 
heard, generally commanding a record to be 
made of Divine laws, precepts, warnings or en- 
couragements. The unseen world is opened — 
why ? Not chiefly to prove the existence of such 
a world, but to shorn that God is speaking from 
that world, and not man, spirit or angel. The 
chief purpose of the unveiling is not to satisfy 
curiosity or convince sceptics of another exist- 
ence, but to reveal God and His laws. This is 
what we call the right unveiling. In this God 
speaks; His message is uplifting; the supernat- 
ural enforces the practical. The effect is to 
spiritualize the earthly, while in all wrong unveil- 
ing the effect is to materialize the heavenly. All 
through the Bible the spiritual world is unveiled 
in glimpses, but the unveiling brings a vital les- 
son. The Divine thunders of Sinai brought to 
the world the Decalogue, not as a new but as a 
Divine law, and also the new thought of one 
God over all the earth, long lost to the world. 
Some think that an outside, sensuous proof of 
another world would, by itself, uplift humanity. 
If men could only realize the tremendous fact 
that there is no death, and that their future would 
depend on their lives here, how (it is argued) 
could people do wrong? This is the theory of 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 5 

spiritualists, and of some in the Society for 
Psychical Research. But what says the gospel 
in the parable? "If they hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither would they be persuaded 
tho' one rose from the dead." If they are not 
ready to obey the law, they cannot much profit 
by a miracle. Such a conviction alone, even if 
it could be made permanent, would only affect 
the surface of character. It lacks the true mo- 
tive. It lacks spirit and life. It lacks the inward 
power of God. "Except a man be born from 
above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." A 
faith in a future life with God left out lacks the 
vital element. But faith in that world as a fea- 
ture, a confirmation, of faith in God and obedi- 
ence to His laws, is a power for good. 

If the restless world of to-day, striving for 
the things which perish, could have a true picture 
of the future world, could realize how all that 
is hidden here comes to the light and judgment 
of Divine truth there; and how it is the pres- 
ence of the Divine Spirit in the soul which alone 
banishes that love of self which makes hell and 
is hell; and that we need to obey the law of 
God before the Divine love can come in and 
take possession; if all could see how that inner, 
religious obedience is building for itself, even 
here, a real mansion in the heavens, that would 
help. We need a belief in the other world that 
is intelligent and rational. We do need a firmer 
belief in a spiritual world ; but we need a firmer 



6 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

and more rational belief in God and His laws 
of life to go with it. We need the conviction 
that it is the Divine voice which said and which 
says, "Behold, I come quickly, and my reward 
is with me, to give to every one according as 
his work shall be." 

Orderly unveilings of the spiritual world, such 
as can be made public, are given in connection 
with and as subsidiary to Divine revelation. The 
character of those unveilings will depend upon 
the state and needs of the world at the time. 
The Lord also sometimes permits disorderly un- 
veilings; for they may prevent a greater dis- 
order. 

We are not considering those personal or pri- 
vate glimpses of the other life which occasionally 
come before death or at other times. These, when 
unsought, are sometimes right, and in harmony 
with revelation. 

There has never been a great, enduring re- 
ligious movement without something answering 
to a spiritual vision. It may not always be an 
open vision, but it is a consciousness of an un- 
usual presence, an unusual power. But we will 
consider now only the open visions of the Bible, 
and these only in a very general way. 

It is true that radical critics interpret the vi- 
sions of the Bible as the oriental, symbolic or 
poetical imaginings of zealots in a childish and 
superstitious age. But this theory, when applied 
to the New Testament (where we find the bold- 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 7 

est, vividest, most constant and literal assertions 
of experiences in the unseen world which the 
Bible contains), becomes especially weak. 

The gospel begins with miraculous openings 
— the angels coming to Joseph and Zacharias 
and Mary. These accounts, including the vision 
of the shepherds of Bethlehem, begin the gos- 
pels ; and they end with the miracle of the resur- 
rection and ascension. All of the scenes of the 
closing book of the Bible (Revelation) are laid 
in the spiritual world. It is impossible to account 
for the rapid spread of Christianity without the 
miracle of the resurrection. "We know" says 
Paul, and the word "know" is the word we 
should use as witnesses in a court of law when 
we take an oath that we know certain facts. 
"We have heard, we have seen, our hands have 
handled/ 5 says John, "the Word of Life." And 
that means not only that they had seen Jesus in 
the flesh, and seen Him dead and buried in the 
tomb, and seen Him risen, but it means, as his 
disciple Peter says in his epistle, and as three 
of the gospels tell it, he, with James and John, 
beheld Jesus transfigured on the mountain, and 
with Him Moses and Elijah, dead for centuries. 

But for these wonderful unveilings of the un- 
seen world, Christianity might have been buried 
with Jesus in the tomb of Joseph. Nothing else 
could have rallied those scattered, disappointed 
disciples, and made them willing to suffer and 
die. And the crowning experience of all was 



8 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

the historical fact of Jesus' resurrection — His 
appearance first to one, then to two, then re- 
peatedly to the eleven, and finally to more than 
five hundred at one time. I do not say that these 
openings of the spiritual world alone could ac- 
count for Christianity. They were only the signs 
of His Divinity, the seals of His teachings, the 
proofs that God is love. The apostles went forth 
into the world with the cry, ' 'Christ is arisen." 
By this supreme fact all the facts of the past 
story of Jesus' life were explained, were glori- 
fied, were spiritualized by the power of the Holy 
Spirit of Truth. This supreme fact elevated the 
life of Jesus above the plane of a civil reform, 
and made Christianity a world religion. 

Looking still farther backward for a moment, 
the same supernatural experiences made Judaism 
possible as a preparation for Christianity thro' 
the giving of the Bible, the Word of God, whose 
literal sense was based upon Jewish history* It 
was not a spiritual religion. It was not that 
the Jewish people were better than others that 
Divine revelation came through them. Moses, 
the founder, tells us that they did not want it; 
that they resisted it; that they constantly re- 
belled against it. Only the Divine power estab- 
lished it, and the exercise of that power required 
supernatural experiences from beginning to end. 
And hence, at the Divine dictate, Abraham came 
from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan. By the 
same Divine opening of the unseen world Isaac 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 9 

was led, and Jacob beheld in vision the ladder 
to heaven, and Moses saw the burning bush, and 
Sinai thundered the voice of the living God, and 
Joshua was confronted by the Captain of the 
Lord's host on Jordan's farther shore, and the 
prophets, from Samuel to Malachi, beheld the 
scenes and heard the voice of the Lord in the 
unseen world. All this was necessary, not as a 
substitute for revelation, but as an accompani- 
ment of revelation, and especially necessary in 
those days of spiritual darkness and deadness. 

If we had time, it would be interesting to 
follow this thought into other fields outside of 
the Bible, and to shew that not only in the es- 
tablishment of the grand dispensations of re- 
ligion, but in its minor reforms or renewals, 
there must have come to the leaders, if not an 
actual vision of the hereafter, if not an actual 
lifting of the curtain dividing the two worlds, 
there must have been at least a new and more 
vivid consciousness of the presence of spiritual 
forces, such as made Luther say, "I cannot do 
otherwise," such as made Savonarola dare the 
flames, or called John Wesley away from a dead 
and formal state church to save and serve the 
poor, and afterwards led to the reform or Trac- 
tarian or Oxford movement within the church 
itself. 

So it must always be in all spiritual develop- 
ment. If not an opening of the eyes, there must 
be the sense of a Presence, a Power, beyond this 



io RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

world. It was in the wild, lawless period of 
Israel's history in the time of the Judges, that 
it was written, "the Word of the Lord was pre- 
cious in those days; there was no open vision"; 
and the reform came through Samuel, to whom 
the Lord openly spoke. Consciousness of the 
supernatural always attends the living church. 
Weakness, worldliness or sin follow when that 
consciousness fails. It is the wise man Solomon 
who says, "Where there is no vision, the people 
perish." Even if the veil is not actually lifted, 
it may be made transparent or translucent. 

But in the case of the need of great or radical 
revolutions in religion, it is essential that the ac- 
tual lifting of the veil accompany the revelation 
of the new and needed truth. Before the one 
great Jewish foundation teaching of one God 
could displace the numerous sensual heathen 
deities, and before the laws of the Decalogue, 
which had always been substantially recognized 
as laws of civil order, could be established as 
the Divine foundations of human life, and thus 
before the way could be prepared for Christian- 
ity, God's voice must be heard, the bush must 
burn, the mountain smoke, the stone tablets be 
cut out without hands. 

And before the Christian teaching could go 
forth to the world — before the Sermon on the 
Mount could unfold the deeper sense of the 
Decalogue, before the disciples could carry to the 
world the message of the one God of love and 






OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD n 

King of an everlasting Kingdom, the unseen 
world must be seen or felt as a present 
reality. Miraculous powers must strike off the 
shackles from prisoners' hands, heal disease, and 
strengthen the messengers of the Lord in the 
presence of torture and death. 

But, once again, we must recall the fact that 
these supernatural unveilings were merely ac- 
companiments of a new revelation. They were 
helps in the establishment of the church as an 
institution to teach God's truth and to lead men 
to follow it. And the Christian unveilings were 
wholly tributary to the new conception of God 
and of Christian life which Jesus Christ revealed 
to His followers by His life and teachings. 

We reach, then, this conclusion: orderly un- 
veilings of the spiritual world are always ac- 
companiments, supports or confirmations of 
Divine revelations. 

In contrast, there are unveilings of the spirit- 
ual world which we believe to be disorderly or 
wrong. These are such as are sought for as 
proofs of a hereafter, and whose effect is to 
weaken the effect of Divine revelation instead 
of strengthening it ; or to substitute the teachings 
of what are believed to be disembodied spirits 
in place of Divine revelation. 

These wrong unveilings have existed in some 
form all through the ages, and they exist to-day 
in various forms, but especially in modern spirit- 
ism. They are recognized and condemned all 



12 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

through the Bible. They were familiar to Moses, 
the prophets and the apostles. I will refer only 
to three instances : 

Moses, in Deuteronomy (xviii, 9-14) says: 
"There shall not be found with thee anyone that 
* * * useth divination, one that practiseth 
augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a 
charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or 
a wizard, or a necromancer. * * * As for 
thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee 
thus to do." 

And we remember how Saul, in his despair in 
not receiving any reply from God by Divine 
means, violated this law of Moses, and consulted 
the witch of Endor in the night, who called up 
from the unseen world one who is called Sam- 
uel, who truly predicted Saul's death at the hands 
of the Philistines on the following day. 

This substitution of the utterances of spirits 
for the law of God was very common in the 
old days. The tendency to it was especially 
strong in times of trouble. And so, later on, 
in the troublous days of Isaiah, that prophet, 
at the mouth of the Lord, was moved to 
say: 

"And when they shall say unto you, seek unto 
them that have familiar spirits, and unto the 
wizards that chirp and that mutter; should not 
a people seek unto their God ? On behalf of the 
living, should they seek unto the dead? To the 
law and to the testimony ! If they speak not ac- 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 13 

cording to this word, surely there is no light in 
them. ,, 

Here we have a strong implication that the 
utterances of these "familiar spirits" are not in 
accord with the Divine law and testimony, and 
should never be sought in their place; and we 
should find, if we looked into the subject, that 
the utterances of these "familiar spirits" are 
mostly opposed to the Divine law, and made a 
substitute for it to-day. We should find that, 
as a rule, they do not acknowledge what we call 
"Divine revelation." We should find that, as 
a rule, God as a Divine Personality is not ac- 
knowledged, and that the supernatural utterances 
of the Bible are regarded as spiritualistic mani- 
festations. And we should find that the usual 
tendency of these things is abnormal, often hyp- 
notic, and sometimes sensual and degrading. 
Doubtless this latter effect was much more 
marked in the ancient days. We see then why 
these practices were so often and so sternly for- 
bidden. 

We are living indeed in a very different age, 
and it would be unjust and unkind to charge 
spiritists or spiritualists as a class with evil prac- 
tices; yet, when the foundation of Divine revela- 
tion is destroyed, and the utterances of spirits 
are substituted, there will be a tendency which 
will be subversive of true freedom, some- 
times mild, sometimes extreme. Two cases 
have come into my own experience, in which the 



i 4 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

effect of following the guide of alleged spirits 
was an actual obsession, so that not only were 
their minds hypnotized, but their bodies were 
controlled. They lost their freedom of thought, 
their power of will, their liberty of action, until, 
through friends' help, they were enabled to turn 
to the Lord Jesus. While such extreme cases 
are doubtless quite rare, yet whenever anyone, 
having lost his belief in revelation, and hoping 
to build his faith in a hereafter on sensuous 
proof, puts himself under these influences, he 
loses in a measure the Divine protection. He 
becomes personally known to spirits of a low, 
earth-bound sort, who, unseen by him, can in- 
fluence him in ways that he is ignorant of. He 
puts himself in their power. These things we 
learn to-day through the experiences of Emanuel 
Swedenborg, who explains and warns us against 
them. 

But at once the question comes, Was not 
Swedenborg himself a spiritualist? Did he not 
claim to deal, for some twenty-eight years, with 
the people of the other world? 

Yes. But now, once more, I must recall our 
underlying thought that there are right, orderly, 
Divine openings of the unseen world as well as 
disorderly ones; that the Divine and orderly 
ones always come in connection with, and always 
in subservience to, a Divine revelation. The 
miraculous appearances of angels and spirits and 
supernatural forces to Israel all centered around 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 15 

the Decalogue and the revelation of one God 
governing all the world. The openings of the 
spiritual world to the prophets were merely ac- 
companiments of a renewed Divine appeal to the 
Jews to obey that law of God from Mount Sinai. 
The angels of the New Testament all came to 
bear witness of Jesus Christ, the Divine Man; 
to testify of Him who came, "not to destroy, 
but to fulfil the law and the prophets/ ' — to re- 
veal their spirit, to change the stern threatenings 
of Mount Sinai, with its black clouds and lurid 
lightnings and thunders, into the sunshine and 
peace of the Mount of the Blessings — to make 
the light of love disperse the shadows of fear. 
At the heart of all was the thought of God in 
Jesus Christ, revealing the true Divine character. 
A vision of the other world must needs attend 
it, that men might be helped to realize that His 
Kingdom is not of this world. It must attend 
it, that in all the changes and chances, all the 
trials and troubles of this mortal life, they may 
keep that promise before them: "let not your 
heart be troubled ; * * * I will come again, 
and receive you unto myself." 

And as it was then, so is it now. If the un- 
veilings of the unseen world at Bethlehem, at 
Tabor, at Gethsemane, at the resurrection on 
Calvary, or the ascension on Olivet, had for their 
purpose that which John, the apostle, describes 
at the close of his gospel : "these things are 
written that ye may believe that Jesus is the 



16 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye 
may have life through His name/' so is it now. 

And this is Swedenborg's message. He tells 
us that Christian doctrine and Christian life had 
declined through the ages; that gradually its 
spirit was lost; that the original thought of one 
God — the Divine foundation which Judaism was 
established to teach — was lost, so that the thought 
of the love of Jesus as the supreme power gave 
place to the thought of a stern Supreme Deity 
separate from Jesus. The establishment of the 
doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God, and 
of Jesus as a vicarious substitute for the sins of 
men, and of the church and its head as the Vicar 
of Christ on earth, and of faith alone or obedi- 
ence to sacraments as an equivalent for a loving 
life of obedience to God's commandments of old 
— all this tended to destroy the real Christian 
church, and to make another revelation from 
God necessary to restore and also to unfold more 
deeply and rationally the teaching of the apostles. 

Strange as it may sound, this is Swedenborg's 
claim, namely, first, to restore the original teach- 
ings of Christianity, and, second, to set them 
upon a new, advanced, and rational basis. He 
calls himself "the servant of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." He comes wholly in His name. He 
speaks by His command. He comes, not to de- 
stroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them. 
He comes in the name of the Lord and of His 
Word of old time, to lead the church back to 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 17 

the old foundations, but not to lead it backwards 
to the dark and cruel ages in which it was born, 
or to stop at its undeveloped conception of Chris- 
tianity. Swedenborg' si teachings are at once 
thoroughly Christian, conservative and progres- 
sive. Jesus, in His glorified form, is God, and so 
God is one, and God is love and unselfishness it- 
self. The Bible remains, as of old, the Word of 
God, the church's chart and compass, but while 
enforcing its practical and literal precepts, it is 
explained as to its deeper or spiritual meaning, 
which meaning is adapted not only to the needs 
of a rational age into which the world is now 
entering, but to the needs of the deeper, truer 
Christian life which will develop in the future. 
All that is revealed is for the sake of this true 
human life — a life of religion built upon the Di- 
vine laws of soul and body; for, according to 
Swedenborg, "All religion is a thing of life, and 
the life of religion is to do good." 

These things, told in barest outline, are the 
essential and vital features of the message which 
Swedenborg, in the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, brings to the world, and which we, who 
accept his teachings as a revelation, feel it our 
duty and our privilege to declare to all the world. 
It is Christianity, but a Christianity at once 
spiritualized and rationalized, and adapted to the 
new age of universal education and developing 
reason. Without asserting that all mysteries are 
explained, we assert that a grand foundation 



18 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

has been laid for their explanation, and doubt- 
less the darkness that lingers will be dissipated 
as we learn to live the life. 

I have dwelt upon these vital teachings of 
Swedenborg with the purpose of bringing them 
into contrast with what is commonly believed 
about his teachings. It is commonly believed 
that his works deal with his supposed experi- 
ences in the spiritual world. But what is the 
fact? The fact is that out of his twenty-nine 
chief volumes which were published by him in 
furtherance of his spiritual mission (after he 
learned of that mission through the opening of 
his spiritual sight), seventeen volumes are de- 
voted chiefly to the unfolding of the spiritual 
sense of Scripture, six are treatises on theology, 
three on spiritual philosophy, one on marriage 
and its opposites, one on the Earths in the Uni- 
verse, one on the Last Judgment, and only one 
limited volume on the spiritual world. And as 
for publishing the dicta of spirits, he tells us 
he never wrote anything from their dictation or 
suggestion, but from the Divine influence, which 
he could sensibly perceive, and distinguish from 
all other influences. And, moreover, he explains 
and in a manner predicts spiritism and warns us 
against its dangers in the strongest possible way. 
In all respects, Swedenborg's unveilings of the 
unseen coincide with the methods of the prophets. 
This is one of the thoughts that I would leave 
with you. 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 19 

And the other and chief thought is that with 
which we began, namely, that while there exists 
in all of us what we may call an instinct of im- 
mortality, this instinct, apart from and unguided 
by revelation, is, in the case of savage tribes, 
changed into superstition and magic, and with 
those less degraded tends to different forms of 
spiritism. Whenever, through abnormal condi- 
tions of mind or body, the other world, on its 
lowest side, becomes more or less known to the 
senses of people through mediumistic agency, the 
effect upon both mediums and their followers is 
likely to be injurious to the higher Christian life, 
and liable to be physically as well as spiritually 
disastrous. This is Swedenborg's teaching as 
well as the result of experience and observation. 

But this is not the effect of the unveilings 
which attend revelation. In these the openings 
of heaven are utilized to serve and strengthen 
the truths of revelation. The true prophets' vi- 
sions are visions of God. He calls them to this 
service, and they are guarded from danger be- 
cause they are in the way of duty. Being in 
the way of duty, God's angels, of whom it is 
said that they shall keep men in all their ways — 
the ways of duty — they could be kept from harm ; 
and so Swedenborg, as he tells us, was protected. 
He never sought to be a prophet. He shunned 
all desire to make for himself a name. He was 
a humble man, believing deeply in God, origi- 
nally a scientist, whose aim was to find the human 



20 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

soul. Like the prophets, his mission came un- 
sought. Like them, the unveiling of the here- 
after came unbidden. Gradually his sight was 
opened, and finally he learned that his mission 
was to make known to the world the principles 
of a new and rational Christianity. 

And so, wonderful and helpful as are Sweden- 
borg' s teachings about the spiritual world (and 
they are wonderfully helpful), we are taught to 
think of them only in connection with the spirit- 
ual principles of living taught in Divine revela- 
tion, or in the Bible, opened and rationalized by 
Swedenborg. Beautiful and real as is the pic- 
ture of heaven which he gives us, yet we are led 
by means of it to remember that, as Jesus said, 
"the Kingdom of God is within you." All that 
Swedenborg tells us about the other world re- 
minds us of our duty in this world ; calls us back 
to this world ; tells us that it is our duty to shun 
all evils, not chiefly for the sake of our personal 
salvation, but to shun them as sins against the 
Master and His life of love. 

In short, there is a similar relation between 
Swedenborg's doctrines of life (if we call them 
his) and his teachings about the other world 
that there is between the law of life given in 
the Commandments from Mt. Sinai and the thun- 
derings and lightnings and the other prodigies 
attending their utterance; or the same as be- 
tween the prophets' message, "Cease to do evil, 
learn to do well/' and the opening of their spirit- 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 21 

ual eyes to see God in His throne, and hear the 
cherubim crying, "Holy, holy, holy." Only now 
the picture of the other world is a rational and 
practical as well as religious one. It does not 
appeal to our curiosity, but to our faith. It up- 
lifts, broadens and sanctifies life as never before, 
destroying superstition, strengthening us for 
righteous endeavor, bringing the spirit of judg- 
ment to bear upon the daily life of deed and mo- 
tive, making all places holy ground, enabling us 
to look forward with joy to the life to come, 
removing as never before the sting of death, by 
the knowledge that death, to the faithful, is but 
the passageway to a larger, wiser, nobler life, 
guided, nourished, led on from glory to glory, 
from strength to strength by the leadership of 
the Good Shepherd, the infinite love and supreme 
wisdom of the Glorified, Jesus Christ our Lord. 



PART II 

WHY MUST THERE BE A SPIRIT- 
UAL WORLD? 



WHY MUST THERE BE A SPIRITUAL 
WORLD? 

Why is a Spiritual World necessary to our 
faith? What is its place and use in the 
economy of religion? An extreme form of the 
question would be, why may we not dispense with 
the idea of another life altogether, and devote 
ourselves wholly to this life? A very different 
and more vital form of the question is, what, in 
the Heavenly Father's sight, and in His purpose 
for His children, is the use and necessity of a 
spiritual world? And finally, the question will 
be specific, viz. : how should the thought of the 
spiritual world, as we are taught to think of it 
now, affect our lives, our purposes, our char- 
acters, to-day?* 

Why should we believe in it at all ? First, be- 
cause life would have no sufficient, no worthy 
meaning without it. How many have asked, in 
the light of this world and of its experiences 
alone, "Is life worth living ?" And while some ; 
whose lines have fallen to them in pleasant places, 

* The question is not to be considered on the broad 
ground of philosophy, but in the light of common sense, 
together with some reference to Swedenborg's teachings, 

25 



26 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

with a goodly heritage of heredity, health and 
balanced temperament, and opportunity of free- 
dom and leisure, might say, "Yes, it is worth 
while/' yet even such, like Solomon, except for 
the thought that God reigns, might question it 
when the sun of life's day sinks low in the heav- 
ens, when the evil days come, and they say, "I 
have no pleasure in them," and the windows are 
darkened, and the doors closed, and one looks 
forward to the time when the silver cord shall 
be loosed, and the golden bowl broken, or the 
pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel at the 
cistern, and the dust shall return to the earth 
as it was. Then comes the verdict of the wise 
man, wise in this world, but not looking beyond 
this world: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity/' 
But on the other hand, with the poet : 

"Grow old along with me, 

The best is yet to be — 

The last of life, for which the first was made. 

Our times are in His hand, Who saith, a whole I planned. 

Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, nor be afraid." 

But looking at the subject from the light of 
this world, they have far more reason than Solo- 
mon (who had every earthly blessing) to ques- 
tion the desirableness of this life to whom it has 
brought suffering or joyless labor, or enforced 
sorrow ; unless, indeed, they are able to look, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, far beyond the three- 
score years and ten. And even if we have ex^ 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 2J 

perienced the Christian's deepest blessing — the 
inward presence of the Master; even when we 
can say with the Apostle, "I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me," yet if this world were all, 
we should presently be compelled, with the same 
Apostle, to say, "If in this life only we have hope 
of Christ, we are of all men most miserable." 
For it would be wholly senseless for the Heav- 
enly Father to put the cup of joy to His chil- 
dren's lips only to withdraw it at once and for- 
ever. All persons, or all who have risen above 
their animal nature, would be miserable without 
some conscious or half conscious recognition of 
a better world — who have a hope if not a faith; 
but those who have obtained a glimpse of life's 
highest meaning would be of all men most miser- 
able. Life would be meaningless if not worth- 
less; it would seem to be an insult, not only to 
intelligence, but to all that is sacred, all that is 
in the highest sense human in man. 

But apart from all this, there is such a thing as 
a wholly blind recognition of another world — a 
testimony to its existence, taking the form of a 
love of life in this world, common to all human 
beings, even the criminal classes. When the poor 
criminal struggles, with the aid of every artifice 
of falsehood and of feature and of law, to es- 
cape conviction, and, when convicted, hopes for a 
change of sentence of death to that of perpetual 
imprisonment — this struggle for a life that, if it 
were all there is, would hardly be worth living, 



28 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

is an unconscious recognition of a life to come. 
When a man seeks to rear up for himself a monu- 
ment, whether as a mausoleum, or a library, or 
church, or hospital, or university, or a family 
name or a kingdom — something which shall carry 
his name down to posterity, it is (Swedenborg 
tells us) a result of the spirit of the immortal 
world, flowing into an earth-bound soul, and 
hence perverted. 

The truth is that we are all spirits living in 
the spiritual world now, only the five senses of the 
spiritual body are so completely veiled over by 
their connection with the five senses of the ma- 
terial body, that the spiritual world in which we 
are actually living, and its people, with whom we 
are most intimately associating, are yet person- 
ally unknown to and unrecognized by us. In the 
poet's phrase, we "move about in worlds unreal- 
ized." Yet we are drawing our chief mental 
forces from that world. Without that compan- 
ionship we could not think nor act. We are 
never alone, even in the darkest solitudes of the 
forest, or the deepest silences of the desert. 

But, as said before, the suggestions from the 
immortal world, the very impressions of immor- 
tality which flow in are affected by our own 
states, and assume an earthly form or coloring. 
Thus Ponce de Leon was in search of the fabled 
Fountain of Youth when he discovered Florida. 
Only a single generation ago the celebrated phys- 
iologist, Brown-Sequard, believed he was on the 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 29 

track of something which would indefinitely pro- 
long life here, when he died. These were blind 
recognitions of a spiritual world. 

Partly because of the old erroneous belief that 
death was a result of sin, the inflowing spirit of 
the immortal world has fathered the belief and 
given birth to the hope of earthly immortality. 
But consider how childish is such a conception! 
Abolish death, and in a few years our earth 
would be crowded to suffocation, unless births 
were abolished also. And that would mean a 
limit to a Divine Father's infinite and loving pur- 
pose. The earth as a schooling for heaven would 
be no more. Then what would become, or what 
has become of the countless host who have al- 
ready passed on, if there be no other world? The 
rule of "first come, first served," would be re- 
versed, and "last come only served," substituted. 
The past would be meaningless ; and there would 
be no future, save for the few. 

And again. How unfit would be this world 
for immortal life ! The eternally expanding needs 
of the human soul would be "cribbed, cabined, 
confined," enslaved within the narrow limits of 
space and time, and one small planet at that. It 
would be not the promised "large place" of Bible 
freedom, but a prison. 

When the child opens his eyes upon this world 
it is new and grand and beautiful. But the aged, 
with failing powers, are apt to echo the psalmist's 
question, "Who will shew us any good," until, 



30 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

in faith, they are able to look forward, and finish 
the verse: "Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy 
countenance upon us." 

A figure rises before my mental vision out of 
the memories of the past. It is a very aged 
man, helpless, almost blind, quite deaf, and with 
a partly paralyzed throat and tongue. But mak- 
ing a great effort, he finally whispers, "waiting, 
waiting !" Waiting for what ? Waiting in vain ? 
Is that hope, bound up with the deepest, sweet- 
est elements of his being — that which has helped 
to hold him true to his God and his fellow beings, 
a vain delusion ? Nay, he is waiting to see Him 
in whom he has believed ; Him whom he has tried 
to follow through the hard lines, the thorny path- 
way of this life; waiting for that world where he 
can find youth and strength to serve his brethren 
again; waiting for the night to give place to the 
dawn, and for the shadows to flee away ; waiting 
for the fulfilment of the promise, "Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the 
heart of man, what He hath prepared for them 
that love Him." 

Why, then, the spiritual world? Because, on 
the mere negative side, nothing else will explain 
human longings, human faith, human hope, hu- 
man uplooking, human excellence. Because with- 
out it life would be meaningless. Because this 
world can never satisfy the soul's needs. Be- 
cause this world's experiences can never satisfy 
the sense even of justice. Misty, irrational and 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 31 

imperfect as the faith in immortality has been, it 
has held a vital place among the forces which 
make for progress. If we ask for the reason of 
early Christianity's power — its power to conquer 
Rome and to overcome the world; its power to 
sustain men suffering the most cruel tortures ; its 
power to purify the heart from sin and selfish- 
ness, we shall find it in the realization of the love 
of God, as shown in Christ Jesus their Lord ; and 
we shall find the thought of that love so bound 
up with the conception of a kingdom not of this 
world, that the two cannot be separated. With 
the thought of immortality left out, the love of 
Jesus would have had small significance. The 
original symbol of Christianity was not the cross, 
but the Good Shepherd, with the lamb in his arms. 
And the power of that picture lay in the thought 
contained in His words : "My sheep hear my 
voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and 
/ give unto them eternal life, and they shall never 
perish." His love, I say, was bound up with the 
thought of eternal life. "In the world ye shall 
have tribulation; but be of good cheer." And 
again, the converse is true; the true thought of 
eternal life is bound up with Him. Without 
Him the spiritual world is soulless. For in His 
last prayer He said, "This is life eternal, that 
they may know Thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Eternal 
life in its high sense means not chiefly continua- 
tion of existence, but life ruled by His spirit of 



32 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

love, life of the soul, life in His kingdom in 
union with Him. But His kingdom cannot reach 
its perfection in a realm of time and space. His 
kingdom is not of this world. 

And when we realize, as we are taught now, 
that Jesus Christ glorified is God; that whoever 
sees Him sees the Father, whose children we all 
are, sees the Good Shepherd, whose flock we are ; 
when we realize that His love is not only for 
time, but eternity, then we can understand the 
necessity of an eternal world. And we can 
understand the necessity of our planet and of 
all planets continuing to fulfil their use of lay- 
ing the foundations of our eternal existence. As 
Paul said : "That was not first which is spiritual, 
but that which is natural; and afterwards that 
which is spiritual." When the foundation is laid, 
then we may go hence into a world free from the 
restrictions and restraints of the material world 
and body into a world where, because He lives, 
we shall live also. 

Now let us try to understand why death, in 
the light of the New Church, is the very opposite 
of what it seems, and why it is a blessing, not a 
curse. All are familiar with the words of the 
Saviour spoken in connection with the prediction 
of His own decease and departure : "The hour is 
come, that the Son of Man should be glorified. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of 
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 33 

fruit." Glorified! How often He prayed to 
be glorified, to be delivered from the limitations 
of the earthly nature, to put off the finite, and to 
put on the Divine ! But He must finish His work 
here, His work of redemption, first. He must 
overcome the evil powers, and restore mankind 
to spiritual freedom, so that they may also over- 
come and go forth to their larger heritage with 
Him in His own world and kingdom. He de- 
scribed His own deliverance from limitations and 
His entrance upon the unlimited freedom and 
glory and power of the Divine life by the figure 
of the death of the planted grain of wheat spring- 
ing up into a stalk producing many grains. What 
He said of the effect of death upon Himself is 
true in a finite measure of all of us, at least of 
all who have striven to follow the Master amid 
the limitations and temptations of this world. 
Let us then endeavor to understand this truth in 
the light of the New-Church teachings. 

Death frees us from bondage to weak or im- 
perfect physical bodies. How many men of large 
means are there who would not be willing to give 
up almost everything for the rugged health of the 
laborer ? Death frees us from bondage to uncon- 
genial surroundings, duties and associations. 
Necessary as are these surroundings and duties, 
here, vital and Providential as are this world and 
its experiences, yet our permanent home is not 
here. Death sets us free to seek our real home. 
Strive as we may, we cannot, even with unlimited 



34 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

means, and able to command the services, the 
labors, the talents, the art, of the whole world, 
make our surroundings satisfy our real inner 
needs. It is to be doubted whether there is any 
deeper discontent than prevails with such as these, 
unless they are able, consciously or unconsciously, 
to look beyond this world. There is nothing in a 
world of mere things that can permanently sat- 
isfy. It is impossible to make a permanent home 
in a world of things, while it is possible, by the 
right use of things, to see the spiritual life shin- 
ing dimly through materiality. But we need 
more than a dim vision of realities. We may be 
comparatively happy and at peace here, but it is 
only when something of the spirit of the immortal 
world shines through. But the soul cries out, 
even in the best conditions, for a larger freedom. 
It cries out, with Moses in the desert, "I beseech 
Thee, shew me Thy glory." 

Our life will be larger in the spiritual world 
if we have lived rightly here. The dying seed 
will bring forth many grains. We shall be in 
freedom as to body. "The inhabitant shall not 
say, I am sick." Like Israel in the wilderness, 
there will not be one feeble person among the 
tribes of heaven. As to the body, we shall be 
freer, because no longer handicapped by illness, 
age, or infirmity. No fear of the physical re- 
sults of overdoing. The body will respond to the 
soul. 

We shall be free from the friction of uncon- 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 35 

genial companions and surroundings. We can 
command at once by our desire the presence of 
those we love. The environment, too, when once 
we have "found ourselves" in that world, will be 
a help and not a hirfdrance. No more conflict be- 
tween earthly and heavenly demands, the "law 
in the members" warring with the mind. 

We shall be free as to mind and heart; there 
will be opportunities for enlarged knowledge. 
There will be a wonderfully enlarged and deep- 
ened intelligence as well as a vastly increased 
fund of knowledge. We shall understand the 
causes of things rather than their phenomena. 
We can command the presence and help of wise 
instructors, who will also be loving friends. They 
will come at the spirit's call. They will help to 
answer the formerly mysterious questions. They 
will make plain those vital truths of heaven which 
we have seen here, in Paul's words, only "as 
through a glass darkly" (that is, by a reflection 
in the dim, polished, copper mirror). The help- 
ers there will make these things plain, beautiful, 
vibrant with life. "They shall see His face, 
and His name shall be in their foreheads." 
"They need no candle, neither light of the 
sun." 

Again, it is a peculiarity of that world, that all 
the things which appear before the senses are in 
harmony with and helpful relation to the internal 
states and needs of the soul. This is a truth so 
new to the world, so different from what we are 



36 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

familiar with, that it is not easy to tell it, and less 
easy to grasp it. If we hear, for example, that 
the surroundings change with the states of mind, 
it might seem to destroy all reality, and make 
objective nature a kind of phantasmagoria. But 
the truth is, the spiritual world is really as fixed 
and substantial as we could desire. It is not the 
fixity of materiality, but because the permanent 
states of mind of its inhabitants are fixed, or, at 
most, very slow to change. But fixed as is human 
character as a whole, it has its temporary moods 
or needs, and these are reflected in the other 
world by temporary changes in outward nature, 
and temporary companionships, which serve both 
for illustration and improvement. The spir- 
itual world may be said to have quite as 
much fixedness as this world, but its peo- 
ple may be said to move about at will, so to 
speak, among its various scenes. Or, the homes 
of heaven are, in general, fixed and unchanging, 
but the particulars vary with the states and needs 
of their occupants. The spiritual world is full of 
truly living pictures. How we labor here to illus- 
trate thoughts so that children can grasp them! 
In heaven an angel mother, teaching the little 
child who has gone from the earth, can call upon 
outward nature to reproduce that thought, and 
it is done. Is it historical characters she would 
describe ? They can be made to appear in living 
form, until the lesson is learned. Would she 
teach some profound Bible truth? (For they 






OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD Z7 

have the Bible there in a more living expression.) 
That truth can be reproduced in beautiful and 
living heavenly symbols in a manner that will 
be understood by and be delightful to the childish 
mind and heart, as well as to the mature under- 
standing. 

And so, with adults as well as children, every 
facility is furnished to guide the soul onward into 
deeper realms of truth, into deeper, sweeter and 
broader states of love for God and man, and into 
larger capacities for usefulness. 

As to the question of usefulness, that is, of 
heavenly occupations, here, too, our life will be 
larger, for we shall be at home. It is but little 
that we know, or are capable of knowing, about 
heavenly occupations. I have alluded to the care 
of children or young people, who have been 
taken. If parents knew what is being done for 
them on the other side, their hearts would have 
deep cause for rejoicing, although their natural 
feelings would still remain. We remember what 
the Bible says of the angels having charge over 
us here, both adults and children. If we could 
realize what is being done for us all through our 
life here by unseen guardians, whom the Lord 
calls to this service, we should all rejoice. Can 
we better show our gratitude than by daily co- 
operation with them, and when the helpful, kindly 
thought comes, or the flash of inspiration to do, 
not our own, but the loving Father's will, may 
we not thank the Father that He has sent His 



38 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

angels, and be grateful that we have been worthy 
of such association, even for a little while? 

We might pursue the subject of the enlarge- 
ment of useful opportunity, the deepening of char- 
acter, the opening up of the soul to higher and 
higher realms of truth, afforded by the spiritual 
world. With time we might make it clearer why 
that world is necessary, not only to explain the 
meaning of the life here, but necessary to explain 
why the deep longings of the human heart can- 
not be satisfied here, and to show how, in that 
domain of living substance, all human powers are 
set free. All will have room for exercise, room 
for service to fellow-men — room for intellect and 
will, for heart and hands; room to grow in un- 
derstanding, love and power; room to learn truth 
without error and without obscurity; room for 
the soul to expand and receive more and more of 
the Father's willing gifts; opportunity to ap- 
proach nearer and nearer to Him who loves us, 
and who made us to be images and likenesses of 
Himself. And so death is no more a grinning 
monster, but a beautiful angel, bidding the spirit 
to go forth to its birthright of heavenly wealth of 
wisdom, love and usefulness; bidding the one 
grain of earthly capacity to die, that it may bring 
forth 30, 60 or 100 grains. 

I have tried to answer, why is the spiritual 
world necessary? Why is faith in it vital to 
men? And now, in conclusion, let me apply that 
to our own special thought of the spiritual world, 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 39 

which we believe to be revealed from heaven, with 
this single question in mind : "What is the legiti- 
mate effect of this special teaching upon life and 
character? Or, what use does it serve ?" 

It serves two great purposes. 

1. It presents a clear and attractive picture of 
the future home. Taught wisely in early child- 
hood, let me assure you that it remains a beautiful 
vision of reality to look forward to. It banishes 
the old, irrational, misty thought of a bodily 
resurrection; it gives us a rational thought in its 
place; it has power to remove the old fear of 
death; and while it cannot destroy our natural 
affection, so that we can no longer mourn for 
those we love, who have gone in advance of us, 
it does help greatly to modify our grief, and 
bring our loved ones nearer. 

Let me illustrate one of these statements re- 
specting the effect of this teaching. A promising 
young man, indirectly connected with the church 
of my former pastorate at Cincinnati, won the af- 
fections of a young and very beautiful girl in a 
distant city, who had been brought up in the light 
of our faith. The union was brief. She was 
taken ill, and grew worse. When her husband, 
who was most tenderly attached to her, was ex- 
pressing to her his own grief and his sympathy 
for her in the almost certain prospect of death, 
she replied cheerfully, "Oh, death is nothing; it 
is merely like passing from this room into the 
next." In this state she fell asleep. This faith 



40 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

removes the fear of death. I might say more 
and add, without hesitation, that it often makes 
the thought of going hence positively attractive, 
as one would love to go to a country beautiful 
in climate, soil, scenery, and where love and jus- 
tice reign supreme, and the love of Jesus Christ 
rules over all. 

2. The other thought is this : 

Our vision of the other world, or, at any rate, 
the vision of heaven, while in one aspect very 
beautiful, is in another aspect quite forbidding. 
For it is not merely a beautiful, sentimental pic- 
ture of a lovely home. It tells of the beauty of 
the soul and life. The beauty of heaven, the 
peace and joy of heaven, are possible only to the 
unselfish, the pure in heart, the just and true in 
word and act, the transparent in character. And 
not only in the sight of men, but in the sight of 
Him who reads the heart. True in motive and 
purpose, as well as word and deed, must they be 
who would attain the heavenly state. More- 
over, our teaching is, that it is on earth that we 
must begin that life. Here must the foundations 
be laid. And while the blind in the world or the 
ignorant and incapable are not to be judged as 
are the intelligent, they who have the light are 
responsible according to their light. And so the 
light or truth of heaven is a judgment. The pic- 
ture of heaven which we behold, so far from 
leading us away from life's duties, or bidding us 
dwell in sentiment, almost sternly bids us return 



i 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 41 

to this world and be faithful to our duties and to 
God's commandments if we ever expect to attain 
heaven. It holds up the ten commandments of 
Mount Sinai as the holy law of God, written with 
his own finger, and obedience to them as the basis 
of heavenly life. It also opens up the deeper 
meanings of those commandments, until they are 
seen to be laws searching the heart to its inner- 
most depths. It tells of the vital importance of 
each period of life, the sacredness of every day 
and hour, as the seasons and opportunities for 
preparation for an unending existence. It tells 
of the obligation resting upon us, to use all our 
talent, all our possessions, as a trust placed in 
our hands by the Lord, to be employed in His 
service, that is, in the service of our fellow men. 

Why, then, the spiritual world ? Why does the 
human race, in all ages, lands and faiths, believe 
in it? Because there is a universal human de- 
mand for such a faith — a demand of the heart, 
of the intellect, and a demand growing out of 
life's experience. The belief in it is necessary, 
on man's part, to satisfy his faith in the Divine 
justice, and in the Divine love. The spiritual 
world is necessary, on the Lord's part, to satisfy 
His love for us as His children — that love which 
can only be satisfied by giving them the gift of 
eternal life. 

Because, once more, it is absolutely essential 
to human development. We have powers which 
cannot be developed in the restrictions of material 



42 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

space and time. We ask questions which cannot 
be fully answered here. We are capable of a use- 
fulness and happiness impossible here. Death is 
essential as a stepping stone to that more abun- 
dant life which the Saviour has promised us. It 
was expedient that He go away from His disciples 
in body that He might come closer to them in 
spirit. Where He was, there He promised that 
we should be also. He can fulfil that promise 
fully only in His own and the soul's own world. 
And finally, the revelation of that world which 
has been given for our use today is necessary, we 
believe, to establish our faith in immortality upon 
the rational basis befitting a manhood age of the 
church, to deliver our faith from its childish 
superstitions, and to furnish us with substantial 
reasons for right living here and now, and to 
supply nutriment for that inner and higher motive 
life which prevails in heaven. 



PART III 
WHERE IS THE SPIRITUAL WORLD? 



WHERE IS THE SPIRITUAL WORLD? 

At the eastern end of Lake Geneva, in Switzer- 
land, high up among- the hills, overlooking the 
noble scenery of that region, is an attractive 
resting place for tourists. Across the lake to 
the south mountains a mile and a half high rise 
abruptly from the shore. Farther away, to the 
left, loftier peaks, covered with eternal snow, 
are visible. From a still higher point back in 
the hills Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn appear 
on the dim horizon. 

But this view requires a clear atmosphere. On 
the average summer morning even the mountain 
across the lake is covered with clouds. As one 
watches for the near mountain outline, when the 
mists are rising at the bidding of the strength- 
ening sun, one first sees it as the outline of the 
cloud, the sole difference being the permanence 
of the mountain lines, while the cloud lines 
change. But by and by, the form becomes 
clearer, and at last the whole magnificent pros- 
pect is revealed. 

Observing this phenomenon recently, this 
thought came : 

With most people, spiritual subjects, or, as the 

45 



46 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

Bible calls them, "lofty" subjects, including the 
thought of a spiritual world, are misty, mysteri- 
ous, sometimes even painful; spiritual things 
mingle with clouds of fancy or with superstitions. 
It does not destroy the faith of the true hearted 
but obscures it. But where the pride of intellect 
prevails, spiritual things are, for this reason, apt 
to seem like all cloud and no mountain. Some 
do not hesitate to attribute the faith in the here- 
after to dreams, or abnormal bodily conditions. 

But other thinkers say that the fact of the 
universal permanency of faith in a life after 
death among all nations, notwithstanding its 
cloudiness, is one of the strongest evidences of 
its truth. 

Will the mists ever arise? Hear what the 
prophet says: 

"He will destroy in this mountain the face 
of the covering cast over all people, and the veil 
that is spread over all nations. He will swallow 
up death in victory, and the Lord will wipe away 
tears from off all faces." Hear also our Lord's 
words: "The son of man shall come in the 
clouds of heaven with power and great glory." 
Again: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with 
men, and there shall be no more death." 

Instead of the belief of the past — i. e., a be- 
lief in the second advent of the Saviour in the 
literal clouds of the sky — think of an advent of 
His Spirit of love and truth, making the clouds 
which cover the Bible's surface bright with new 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 47 

meaning, and dispersing the clouds of the mind, 
which mingle faith with superstition, if not with 
fear or dread. 

Our Lord also said, "I have many things to 
say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But 
when the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide 
you into all truth, and will show you things to 
come." 

This church stands for the belief that these 
promises have been or are being fulfilled; that 
light has been given on all great spiritual sub- 
jects, including the thought of the life after 
death. And what is said here will be based upon 
what has been in this way revealed. 

I would like at once to come to that aspect of 
our subject which would be a comfort to those 
who are mourning the loss of loved ones. This 
I shall hope to do a little later. But now I 
shall speak more to the mind than to the heart, 
and more to the scientific than the higher mind, 
for our thought is merely preparatory. I shall 
speak to those who are asking the question, 
"Where is the spiritual world?" whether the ques- 
tion implies a doubt of the existence of any such 
world, or whether it be an earnest, rational in- 
quiry, devoid of prejudice or doubt. 

It is a question to which all believers, savage 
or civilized, have made some reply. With the 
Greeks and Romans, feeble in spirituality, the 
world of spirits was underground; with the 
tribes of northeastern Siberia it was under the 



48 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

ocean; with the North American Indians it was 
on the earth's surface, far away. All would 
point and say, "Lo, it is there." 

But with a large part of the race, including 
Christians, it has been thought to be somewhere 
above, in suns or planets or stars, or beyond. 
With the old Druids the Milky Way was re- 
garded as a procession of human souls on their 
journey to a far off home. Christians' thought 
has been almost as cloudy and fanciful. Talk- 
ing about a spiritual world, they have longed 
for something solid, fixed, material, and so they 
have even taken up with the old heathen concep- 
tion of the resurrection of the material body in 
a rejuvenated material world, and the thought 
has vibrated between this and the dream of 
planets or stars as the future home. And why? 
Because they wanted to associate their loved ones 
gone with the thought of reality, solidity, and 
they are willing to make use of superstitions and 
myths in order to preserve this idea of reality, 
and so, too, they visit the graves of their be- 
loved. But faith persists in spite of the mists. 
The outline of the mountain remains permanent, 
unlike the clouds. 

Let us first ask the Bible our question — not, 
indeed, those parts which are expressing opinions, 
but those in which the spiritual world actually 
comes to view. 

Recall the passage in II Kings (VI, 17), in 
which Elisha prayed that his servant's eyes might 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 49 

be opened, and they were opened. They were 
not the eyes of his earthly body, which had pre- 
viously seen the horses and chariots of the 
Syrians in the plain, but the eyes of a different 
body, which could see the horses and chariots of 
fire on the mountain. 

The shepherds of Bethlehem saw the glory 
in the night time and heard the angels' song. 
Nobody else saw or heard them, as far as we 
are informed. They must have had other eyes 
and ears opened, which commonly are closed. 

Up to a high mountain apart Jesus led Peter, 
James and John, where they saw their Master 
in His glorious body, and with Him Moses and 
Elijah, who had been dead, as we call it, the 
one for eight, the other for fifteen centuries. 
Then suddenly the eyes that saw these things 
were closed, and Jesus was seen alone, and His 
shining garments gave place to the travel-stained 
Syrian raiment. 

In all these instances and many more recorded 
in the Bible the eyes and ears and sometimes other 
senses of the spiritual body, unless the Bible tells 
of fancy and not fact, were opened into the spirit- 
ual world. Where was that world? If you had 
asked Elisha's servant, he would have said, 
"Why, it is here." So would the shepherds. If 
we must answer in the terms of space and time, 
so must we say it is not in sky or suns or planets, 
not far away, but here — close at hand. Put away 
this misty dream of travelling through space, in 



50 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

the company of planets, suns and comets. A veil 
falls from the inner eyes, and we are there. 
Sometime that veil will fall from the eyes of all, 
and death will be death no more. 

And now let us try to answer the question 
in the light of the New-Church philosophy, ap- 
proaching it from the earthly side. Here is the 
solid earth, with its rock basis, which to our 
senses is the most real of all things. Divided up 
into farms or town lots, we call it real estate. 
In one sense — the lowest sense — it is real (not 
imaginary, as the idealist thinks), but in another 
sense it is the least real of all things, because 
the deadest of all things, or the least alive. Let 
us understand how, and thus where, we are to 
look for genuine realty or reality. 

Surrounding the earth and extending above 
it for perhaps a hundred miles is the air we 
breathe, and which is the medium of sound to 
the ear. Within the air, and penetrating it in 
every direction, scientists have discovered an- 
other atmosphere of a much more vital kind, 
which is the medium of both light and elec- 
tricity, which they call ether. And now they 
suspect that there is still another vastly more 
refined atmosphere, which is the medium of 
gravitation, that very mysterious force which 
has baffled thought for ages. 

Now observe, if you please, how the vitality, 
that is, the life, and in this sense the reality, in- 
creases as we pass from the gross to the refined, 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 51 

or as we approach the spiritual. The motion 
of the waves of the sea may be at the rate of 
ten or fifteen miles an hour. The motion of 
the waves in the air, which conveys sound, is 
about 1,200 feet in a second. The motion of 
the waves in the ether, which conveys light and 
also electricity, is about 180,000 miles in a sec- 
ond. The motion of the waves in that more sub- 
tile medium which conveys the force of gravita- 
tion appears to take no time at all. For while it 
requires eight minutes for light to come to us 
from the sun, or at the rate of twelve million 
miles a minute, this motion is like the crawling 
of a snail compared with that of the gravitation 
force, which operates instantly between star and 
star. 

That is to say, the deeper we penetrate into 
the mysteries of nature, the nearer we come to 
nature's swiftest forces. And another fact is 
that in these deeply concealed, invisible atmos- 
pheres are the most vital, most powerful forces. 
Take away the motion of the ether, and all light 
and heat would fail. Remove gravitation, and 
not only would rivers no longer flow, and the 
tides of the ocean fail, but planets and suns would 
cease to revolve. All life would perish. 

We have seen how nature is made up of layers 
or degrees, one within another, the deepest or 
most hidden being the most vital and real. But 
now, instead of nature as a whole, let us think 
of man. 



52 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

It has been said by another that, if we sepa- 
rate the bony system from the rest of the body, 
it is recognizable as human, although as a skele- 
ton it is crude and repellent. Here we have one 
degree of the body, the lowest, most earthly 
part, separate from the others. Again, if we 
should separate the circulatory system of heart 
and branching arteries and veins in all their num- 
berless ramifications even to the smallest capil- 
laries, and could hold it up before us, we should 
see a much more perfect human form. Here is 
another separate degree. Once more, if we could 
separate the brain with its branching nerves from 
all the rest, we should behold a still more per- 
fect human form, very distinct in its degree from 
all the rest, and superior to all the rest. 

Now the brain, with its nervous system, is 
more interior, more secret, and hence more diffi- 
cult to understand, than all the rest. Only in 
these last days have physiologists begun to com- 
prehend it. Its workings can never be seen, as 
can those of the bones or circulatory system. It 
can only be known by experiments with living 
creatures, or else through accidents or injuries 
to its several parts. The life of the body is in 
the brain. Injure one small part of the brain, 
and the eye cannot see ; another, and the ear can- 
not hear; another, and the tongue cannot speak 
words; another, and the mind cannot grasp 
words, although it can understand as well as 
ever; another, and the power of movement is 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 53 

destroyed. The brain rules every part of the 
body. It is the body in a higher form. 

But the brain itself is, on its part, only a serv- 
ant to the mind, which is distinct from it, and 
wholly out of sight. Here, then, is the real man 
— the being who thinks, and loves, and chooses; 
the being who has power to live to the flesh, or 
to the spirit. It is not the eye that sees, but the 
brain ; nor yet the brain, but the mind. The eye 
is but a superior opera glass, fitted to the eye of 
the brain, and the brain a far superior opera 
glass, fitted to the eye of the mind. You observe 
that the mind is so far above, or so far within, 
or so far distant from the lower stratum of this 
world that it takes several opera glasses to bring 
earth near enough to be seen! 

And yet, with all this great chasm between 
mind (or spirit) and matter, how easy it is, by 
means of these opera glasses, to bring the mind 
down to earth! And here is the sad part of it, 
that the mind cannot only look down to earth, 
but in its freedom it may actually descend to 
earth and make its home there; and, like the 
accursed serpent in Eden, crawl with its whole 
length in the dust. And this, by the way, is 
involved in that Bible story of Eden and the fall. 

Departing from our immediate thought for 
one moment, let us inquire what happened to 
Elisha's servant when he saw the horses and 
chariots of fire, and the shepherds of Bethlehem, 
or to the disciples at the transfiguration ? Simply 



54 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

this : the opera glass of the brain became detached 
for a moment from the mind above it, so that 
the mind became free to use some of the senses 
of its spiritual body. 

For this fact that the mind sees, and hears, 
and tastes, and touches, and not the eye, or ear, 
or tongue, or hands, means that the mind is in 
the human form, having its own organized body, 
with all its parts, only made of a different mate- 
rial, or substance. The invisible mind is the life, 
the power, the man. Indeed, it is the power 
which has given to the body of this world its 
form and personal peculiarities. As the old Eng- 
lish poet Spenser, with the true poet's insight, 
says: 

"For of the soul the body form doth take; 
The soul is form and doth the body make." 

And now one step higher. As the body is made 
up of layers, bones, muscles, heart and its rami- 
fications, brain and its nerves, so the mind itself 
has its higher and lower degrees, and while the 
angel man lives in one of the higher degrees, the 
selfish or earth-bound spirit or man lives in the 
lower. And we can think of each plane or degree 
having its own body answering to the state of 
the mind. Hence, the angel is beautiful, and 
the earthly spirit is unbeautiful, or deformed. 
But besides the spiritual body, there is some- 
thing which every one who dies takes with him 
from this world, composed of the most interior 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 55 

substances of the natural world, and it is this 
which retains the memory of the world, and will 
enable us to recognize our friends when we go 
hence. But this is a subject as yet imperfectly 
understood. It is for the future. 

We look up into the sky at night, and with 
our present knowledge of the stars we realize 
a little the immensities of space. But far more 
wonderful is what we are told about the inside 
meaning of all this marvellous foundation or 
preparation for life which we behold in this grand 
universe. Most of our stars are suns, around 
which no doubt revolve countless planets filled 
with people who will soon pass over to the other 
side, the life side, of their worlds. We can think 
of every planet having its own spiritual world 
around it, all the more real because it is at pres- 
ent hidden from the eyes of the earthly body. 

The reason underlying all this is very simple. 
It is this: as we leave the surface and approach 
the centre of life; or as we leave the visible and 
draw near what is now the invisible, we find sub- 
stances and forces growing more living and pow- 
erful. All nature's index fingers in science, as 
well as in all the religious intuitions of the ages, 
are pointing inward, not outward, not to the sky 
above, but to the soul within, and within and 
above the individual soul to God, who is a spirit, 
the One Life, the inmost and only Life in all. 

The poor woman of Samaria asked the Savior 
whether the dwelling place of God was in Mt. 



56 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

Gerizim, as the Samaritan Jews thought, or in 
Mount Zion, as the Judaean Jews believed. Shall 
we say, "Lo here! or lo, there !" The Greeks, 
too, if asked for the dwelling place of Jupiter, 
the supreme deity, would point to Mt. Olympus, 
and say, "Lo, there." But Jesus said, "Neither 
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem. God is 
a spirit, and they that worship Him must wor- 
ship in spirit." And in a similar sense, tho' less 
profound, do we affirm that the spiritual uni- 
verse is within the material, as the soul is in the 
body. 

Why, then, have so many located heaven in 
the skies? A complete answer would require 
time. We shall have to acknowledge that the 
Bible often seems to locate God's dwelling place 
on high; and from time immemorial have wor- 
shippers built their altars on high places. In 
brief, this is the answer. Elevation in space is 
the natural symbol of what is interior, pure, re- 
fined or holy in the state of the heart and mind. 
We speak even now of "high thinking," or "lofty 
thought," meaning deep thought, or pure, true 
thought — thought which strives to attain a 
heavenly standard. And so we think of heaven 
as above. And so the Bible, the Word of God, 
speaks in the language of symbolism, when it 
speaks of Him as "the High and Lofty One, who 
inhabits eternity, and whose name is holy." And, 
therefore (to continue the quotation), it says that 
He "dwells in the high and holy place, with him 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 57 

who is of a contrite and humble spirit." The 
state of humility, then, is a high place. And so 
the Savior, when asked how He could manifest 
Himself to the disciples, said that the Spirit of 
Truth would dwell in them. In a few passages 
of this kind, including the one already alluded to, 
in which He said, "the kingdom of God cometh 
not with observation, but is within you," we read 
the real truth — not only the truth as it applies 
to the development of spiritual character, but as 
it applies to the location of the spiritual world 
itself. The past has been, in a religious sense, 
an age of what we may call spiritual childhood 
or immaturity, which required that the truth 
should be taught, as our Lord for the most part 
taught, in parables or symbols, for they could 
not bear any more then. But the age is approach- 
ing, yea, is close at hand, when we shall be taught 
as full grown men, when we shall be shown 
"plainly of the Father," and plainly and reason- 
ably, too, of His kingdom and the way thither. 
The time is coming when mankind will put away 
childish things in religion, cease to depend upon 
blind authority, cease to be ruled by mysterious 
fears and superstitions; and this will be when 
the spirit of Him who called Himself "the Light 
of the World," and who is the Spirit of Truth 
as well, shall become the Supreme object of our 
worship, God over all, blessed for evermore. 
With Him as our Guide, there will be no dark- 
ness at all. Truth will take the place of error; 



58 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

sunshine will disperse the clouds and darkness; 
the mountain will stand out bright and clear ; we 
shall lift up our eyes to it, for our help; and 
"the mountain of the Lord shall be established 
in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted 
above the hills." 

My friends, we need to realize the stupendous 
and sublime reality of a grand spiritual universe 
within this, a spiritual world within the natural 
world, as the soul is within the body; within, 
not spacially, but statically, and that in the very 
inmost of all, as the supreme life of all, the love 
and the leadership of the Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ. 



PART IV 
WHAT IS THE SPIRITUAL WORLD? 



WHAT IS THE SPIRITUAL WORLD? 

In considering the question, "Where is the 
Spiritual World?" we saw the index fingers of 
nature pointing inward as the source of life. 
We saw the Bible picturing the nearness of the 
spiritual world to this. We saw in the New- 
Church philosophy how creation consists of dis- 
tinct but closely connected layers, degrees, or 
planes, each having its own free or independent 
existence, one degree being within another, not 
in the sense of space, but in quality of life, each 
inner degree being the cause of the one outside 
of it, and hence being more vital, possessing all 
that the outer possesses, only in a nobler form. 
We saw the inner degrees growing more living 
in their ascent, until they reach the inmost, the 
one only real Life in Itself, that is, God, the 
Divine Man, or Divine Love and Wisdom. The 
logic compels belief in a spiritual world, as real 
in all respects as this world, but not the same 
as this, either in substance or in its quality of 
activity. 

We found in the clouded sayings of the lit- 
eral Bible this clear truth: "Neither shall they 
say, lo here or lo there; for the kingdom of God 
61 



62 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

is within you." And we saw that wherever in 
the Bible the two worlds appeared to mingle, 
it was not because earthly eyes can see the spirit- 
ual, but because the inner senses of the spiritual 
body were opened. One world does not shade 
off into the other. The spiritual is not the ghost 
of the natural. But the spiritual appears when 
the spiritual eye is separated from the natural 
eye of the brain and body, as one might with- 
draw his eye from the telescope to behold with 
the eye alone the objects close at hand. For 
it is a fact that we are spirits, living in spiritual 
association now. That world is nearer than this 
is to vis, altho' we are unconscious of it. 

Our question now is, "What is the Spiritual 
World?" Not, what is the nature of the sub- 
stances which compose the spiritual bodies of 
the inhabitants, and the real scenery of the 
spiritual world — the earth, the sky, the sea, the 
hills and mountains and plains and homes which 
that world must contain, if it be a livable world 
to us. This is not our question now, but rather, 
how does that world appear to those who enter 
it? What is the experience of death, and what 
follows death ? What are its occupations ? Time 
will permit only of a brief treatment. 

The basis of our reply must be the experience 
of Swedenborg, who for 28 years passed as 
freely from one world to the other as we go in 
and out of our houses, and who studied that 
world with the same thoroughness and devotion 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 63 

which he had shown in his previous 40 years' 
study of the deepest problems of nature. 

But why take Swedenborg's word? In brief 
reply, let me turn aside for a moment. In the 
month of March, 1908, Swedenborg's remains 
were removed from their obscure resting place 
in London to an expensive mausoleum in the 
Cathedral of his university city of Upsala, in 
Sweden, under the auspices of the English and 
Swedish governments, carried on a Swedish 
warship and escorted, on sea and land, by mili- 
tary, naval, civil and college dignitaries. And 
why? Because of his most remarkable achieve- 
ments in scientific discovery, eclipsed at the time 
by prejudice excited by his subsequent career, 
and only now beginning to be recognized by the 
most advanced students. Most scientific works 
are said to be almost useless after ten years, but 
his works, after 175 years, are only beginning 
to reveal their prophetic quality. We trust him, 
then, first, because he has shown himself most 
worthy of trust, especially because of his intense 
love of truth and his great humility, and his 
entire purity of life. But how about his later 
works? Well, we trust those to the extent that 
they appeal both to our reason and to the deep- 
est intuitions of our souls; or for the reason 
given for the belief in the Gospel: "Whereas 
I was blind, now I see. ,, Not because he inci- 
dentally proved his power to communicate with 
the dead, altho' he did, even to the satisfaction 



64 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

of such a man as Emmanuel Kant, the sceptical 
philosopher. Swedenborg himself never made 
use of such means to convince any one, for he 
well knew that such conviction was of little or 
no value in itself. It is not wrong, however, to 
confirm our faith by this undoubted fact.* 

The very word "death" has had, and with 
many still continues to have, a repellent, if not 
a fearful, sound. Death has been called "the 
king of terrors, ,, and has been pictured as a 
ghastly, pitiless monster. Entering silently and 
unexpectedly into our homes, it has borne away 
into a dark unknown those whose lives are bound 
up with ours. Its approach has been attended 
generally with pain or discomfort, nearly always 
with growing infirmity, by a shrinking of the 
frame, a pallor of the face, and sometimes at 
the last by a laboring of the breath and spas- 
modic movements painful to witness, which, in 
the ignorance and superstition of the past, have 
suggested untold sufferings. And a personal 
fear of death, like a black cloud, has overshad- 
owed many people all through life, casting a 
gloom over everything. 

But not only death, but what follows death, 

has been to some a gloomy, if not a dismal or 

distressing, thought. Personal expressions have 

* Whenever there was some important use to be sub- 
served, Swedenborg did not refuse to bring back word 
from the other world, as in the well-known case of the 
"lost receipt." But he always refused to do it to satisfy 
curiosity about the future. 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 65 

been heard like these: "The spiritual world 
will be wholly strange, and its people will be 
strangers. I must leave home behind, and all 
those familiar faces and surroundings, activities 
and enjoyments which have made life happy and 
desirable. The spiritual world must be, to those 
who enter it, a foreign country." And besides 
this, the old superstitions of the past, the clouded 
symbols of the literal sense of the Gospel, come 
to mind, which have left the impression that the 
love of God, even the love of Jesus Christ, has 
its limit at the grave, and that one is liable to 
hear the stern voice of condemnation, bidding 
him to depart, against his will, into the realm 
of darkness, if not into eternal suffering, or even 
torture. 

We cannot now attempt to answer all these 
questionings and fears, although it would be an 
easy and delightful task. But, first of all, 
let us bring before our minds that supreme truth 
with which Swedenborg, in the work entitled 
"Heaven and Hell," begins his description of 
the spiritual world. In its very first chapter, 
as the central, ruling thought, is the statement 
that "the Lord (Jesus Christ) is the God of 
heaven." Here is the most vital truth of the 
New-Church revelation; the Lord Jesus Christ, 
in His glorified nature, reigns, the God of 
heaven and of all below heaven. "All power," 
He said, "is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth." If we can accept this thought, all our 



66 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

fears of evil which can come to us from the out- 
side, that is, evil which we ourselves have not 
invited by our own wrong courses, will be re- 
moved. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Heavenly 
Father; "he that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father," He assured His disciples. And this 
means not only that His Fatherly love and His 
perfect wisdom are guiding the human race as 
a whole, but it means that He is with every 
child of His in all the details of life, from in- 
fancy to old age, and forever. But that love is 
especially near in the season of death. You 
well know the words of the 23d psalm : "The 
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. * * * 
Yea, tho' I walk thro' the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with 
me." You know the echo of these words in the 
New Testament: "I am the good shepherd and 
know my sheep." We understand that the east- 
ern shepherd knows all his sheep by name, each 
one separate from all the rest, and provides for 
each one separately. So does the Good Shep- 
herd. If we could accept and trust this supreme 
truth, we should fear no evil coming to us from 
the outside, neither in life, nor in death, nor in 
the world to come. 

Here is another great truth of the New Testa- 
ment which we must not forget, namely, that 
whenever and wherever the Lord Jesus Christ 
comes, He comes surrounded with angels. "The 
Son of Man shall come in the glory of His 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 67 

Father with His angels." You recall that at 
His birth the angels came to the shepherds. At 
the close of His temptations in the wilderness 
"angels came and ministered unto Him. ,, At 
His resurrection the angels were at the sepulchre, 
saying, "He is not here, but is risen." The 
thought here is that His spirit makes use of 
human instrumentalities to guide and lead, and 
care for His children at all times, but in a pe- 
culiar and special way, or rather in an open and 
manifest way, at certain great and vital seasons, 
when there is need of it, and therefore at the 
hour of death. And so, when we talk of angels, 
we mean the Spirit of the Lord, in His infinite 
love and wisdom, exhibited especially by means 
of angels. And again, when we talk of angels, 
we do not mean a superior race of beings, but 
we mean men and women and children gone 
hence from the planets, who have become angels, 
and whose joy it is to do their Father's work. 
For there are no other angels — nothing above 
man. 

There are those who are especially fitted to 
attend upon the dying, and to minister to their 
needs on their first awaking. I have mentioned 
the fear of death all through life. Dr. Weir 
Mitchell tells us that in all his experience he 
never knew a single instance of a person fearing 
death when it actually approached, even when 
all through life it had been a matter of dread. 
If we are not ready to say that this is the effect 



68 RIGHT AND WRONG UNYEILINGS 

of supernatural presences, we certainly may see 
in it a merciful provision from some source. Is 
it not the most helpful explanation to recall the 
promise: "Yea, tho' I walk thro' the valley of 
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for 
Thou art with me"? The apparent suffering in 
death is not real ; it is of the body only ; the mind 
is unconscious of it. 

Whether one has lived well or ill, angels from 
the highest realms are with him during the sleep 
of death, and during the first part of the awak- 
ening. If it be true that the angels are with us 
in the sleep of the night, and if we can feel the 
results of their presence when the morning comes, 
in mental clearness of vision and peace of soul, 
it is more true in the deeper sleep of death — a 
sleep not extending beyond the time of our 
Lord's sojourn in the sepulchre, or beyond the 
third day. During the state of unconsciousness 
and the beginning of the awakening these min- 
isters of the Lord surround the dying one with 
what we may call an atmosphere of life and 
love and peace — a sense of being tenderly cared 
for. No evil influences, no anxious states, are 
permitted to approach. No thought of death is 
present, but only of life, life more abundant, 
life eternal, life blessed and happy. As the high- 
est angels are attendant upon the babe at its 
birth and in its period of helplessness, so at the 
birth into the other world the holiest influences 
draw near. 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 69 

And so there is no shock. Just as the sleep 
of the night obscures the vividness of the scenes 
of the day before, so the profounder sleep of 
death helps to lift one above the familiar scenes, 
duties and cares of this world and removes 
still farther away the sense of strangeness or of 
loss. There is also imparted at this time, or 
rather developed, the capacity to think in a 
higher, deeper way than before, apart from 
ideas of space and time, and so to express one's 
self in the language of the spiritual world, 
which is common to all, and understood without 
learning. 

And so, after all this preparation, one gradu- 
ally awakens. First comes a dim consciousness, 
then more complete, and then sight, hearing, 
touch, and all the other senses, and one finds 
himself in a body and world as complete in all 
respects as the body and world here. All is sub- 
stantial and real — more real than ever, because 
the senses of the spiritual body are so much 
more perfect. So natural is it all that one does 
not realize, until he is told, that he has changed 
worlds. He is clothed with a body as real as 
the body he had here. He is in a familiar room 
and house. Outside are familiar scenes; and 
attendant upon him are most kind and loving 
friends, thoroughly human, who are responsive 
to his every wish. At first these companions are 
the highest and best of the angels, who remain 
until they perceive that their presence is no 



70 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

longer congenial or useful, and then they yield 
to others better adapted to his returning earthly 
states (out of which he had been temporarily 
lifted by the beautiful and sacred experience of 
death), until at last he is surrounded by those 
who are thoroughly congenial to his ordinary 
state of mind, and then, for a time, he lives a 
life not very dissimilar in appearance to that 
which he lived in the world. His memory of 
the world is still quite active. He thinks of his 
friends, and his thought may bring their inward 
presence, but he cannot see them, or hear them, 
or touch them, because the substances of the 
higher world, real as they are, do not shade off 
into the substances of this, but are wholly dis- 
tinct in kind, the one never interfering with 
the other. 

If you ask, How can there be a solid and sub- 
stantial world without material substance? this 
is a question which belongs rather to the "why" 
than to the "what." I will turn aside, however, 
for a moment, to say, or repeat, that everything 
material originated in a spiritual or ideal form 
in the spiritual world, and, first of all, in God, 
who made it, and who is a spirit. As Mrs. 
Browning tells it : 



"There's not a flower that blooms upon the eartK 
But hath a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes/' 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 71 

If you can think, not only of flowers, but 
earths and suns and everything else as first ex- 
isting on the spiritual side, and then of the vital 
nature of the substance of the spiritual world, 
capable of being moulded or shaped by the spirit, 
as Mrs. Eddy imagines the fixed and compara- 
tively dead substance of this world can be, then 
you have one clew to the problem. Mrs. Eddy's 
idea in this respect is true there, but only partially 
true here. And if you will remember that, when 
the spiritual body sees and touches spiritual sub- 
stance, the effect is the same as when the mate- 
rial body sees and touches material substance, 
you have an important clew. Then if you can 
grasp the law of correspondence, which connects 
a higher degree with a lower, and which shows 
how things were first thoughts, and how, through 
this law of correspondence, things may be Divine 
symbols of thought, and realize how angels, in 
dealing with things, are dealing with thoughts, 
you have another clew to what life may be here- 
after. And once again, let me repeat, let us 
realize the absolute necessity to human life there 
as much as here is the fact of an outside or objec- 
tive world — a world of objects and sounds and 
contacts. And when it is asked, "How can such 
a world be spiritual, or a world of spirit ? Is it 
not the material world over again?" the reply is 
that the substance of the spiritual world is not 
inert like ours, resistant to the desires of the 
mind, but is a servant to the mind or spirit, is 



J2 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

shaped by the mind, is immediately expressive 
of its affections, its ideas, both literally and sym- 
bolically. The things (as we call them) of the 
spiritual world are not mere things (altho' low 
down spirits may regard them as mere things), 
but they are thoughts in substantial form, and 
in heaven they are expressions of heavenly 
thoughts according to the law of heavenly sym- 
bolism. And so in heaven every apparent deal- 
ing with things is an act of the spirit, or a spirit- 
ual act. Every use is a use for the soul, and not, 
as here for the most part, a use for the body. 
But let us return to our main subject for our 
final thought. 

The spiritual world, according to Swedenborg, 
has three great divisions — heaven, or the abode 
of those who are led by the Lord; hell, the home 
of those who are led by self-love; and the in- 
termediate world, called "the world of spirits," 
which is a state of preparation for the perma- 
nent home. 

The intermediate state has two divisions. The 
one is occupied by those who, in Swedenborg's 
language, are in "the state of the exteriors," 
which means the outside or earthly state of mind, 
into which everyone relapses after the temporary 
uplift caused by the near presence of the angels 
of the resurrection. While the process of death 
dulls the most vivid earthly sensibility, still the 
memory of the world and its people and things 
and activities remains, and for this reason the 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 73 

visible spiritual world does not appear essentially 
different from this world, altho' it is really essen- 
tially different, being a direct expression of the 
state of mind. 

We are all well aware that in this world we 
do not always reveal our real selves, not even 
to friends. The material body, through its very 
fixity, may be made a veil, behind which one 
may hide his real interior purposes. The inner 
life may be very different from the outer. Those 
whom we call evil may not be so from deep 
choice; it may be largely the result of outward 
conditions. Those we call good may be so for 
selfish and worldly reasons. It is absolutely im- 
possible in this world to know the real inward 
quality of any human life, altho' we can see the 
indications. We cannot judge finally of any 
one, while we can say that, if such a one be 
what he appears, he is good or bad, as the case 
may be. 

But while it is not difficult to conceal one's 
inner life here, the whole tendency of the spirit- 
ual world is to bring it to the surface. While 
one may still hide in a measure his secret 
thoughts, it becomes increasingly difficult. The 
whole influence of that world, while careful not 
to destroy the real freedom of any, is to fulfil 
that law spoken by the Savior : "There is noth- 
ing covered, that shall not be revealed ; neither 
hid, that shall not be known. Therefore, what- 
soever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard 



74 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

in the light; and that which ye have spoken in 
the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the 
housetops." And I will add here the Lord's 
words which follow these, altho' not belonging 
to our immediate thought : "I say unto you, my 
friends, be not afraid of them that kill the 
body, and after that have no more that they 
can do." 

This process, by which the interiors are 
brought to the surface, is what is meant by the 
judgment. It is the opening of the books men- 
tioned in Revelation XX. It is a process by 
which the interiorly good at heart are led to re- 
ject the disorder and wrong which lie on the 
surface of their nature, and by which the in- 
teriorly selfish and evil put off what seems good 
in their lives, but which is only a covering or 
veil of evil. It is a process of separation, often 
involving more or less of suffering. It is the 
truth of the intermediate world and the judgment 
which is effected there which is preserved and 
likewise so terribly materialized and distorted in 
the Romanist doctrine of purgatory. This dis- 
tortion and abuse inspired the Protestants with 
such horror that they rejected the whole doc- 
trine of the intermediate world as an invention, 
whereas it is a vital teaching. 

The judgment is simply a process of bringing 
the real life to the surface. And the real life, 
the ruling life, is always the inner life. With 
the well-disposed, it is a relief from the bondage 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 75 

of inside heredities and outside environments. 
One comes into harmony with himself. The 
words of Job are fulfilled: "The wicked cease 
from troubling; the weary are at rest." It pre- 
pares one to find his real home, his place and 
use and joy. Swedenborg tells us that after one 
who is well disposed has passed through this 
second state in the intermediate world (the "state 
of the interiors"), he is like one who comes out 
of darkness into light. His weak affections for 
righteousness and truth give place to strong and 
joyous ones. He is filled with peace. He is like 
Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress/' after the 
heavy load which he had carried so long falls 
off and disappears forever. 

There is a third state, which follows with those 
who are to enter heaven, which Swedenborg 
terms "a state of instruction/' It is an instruction 
in the laws of heaven. But not merely written 
on the outer memory, but written in the heart 
and life. 

If the church on earth were what it should 
be and some time will be, this work, both of judg- 
ment and of instruction, would, in great measure, 
be finished here. But the present disorder renders 
the judgment especially necessary, and is the 
cause of its sometimes severe discipline. Let us 
recall the advice which has come down from 
early Christian days: "Wherefore judge ye 
yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of 
the Lord." But, of course, the old idea of being 



76 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

personally judged by the Lord from a throne 
is merely a symbolic picture. As He Himself 
said : "The word that I have spoken, the same 
shall judge you in the last day." When the books 
of life we have written are opened, another 
book, the Book of Life, will also be opened, and 
the light from the latter Book, the Divine Word, 
will reveal the real quality of our lives. 

Beyond the thought of the intermediate world 
we will not go now, except by brief allusions. A 
word about heaven. It is the home of those 
who have exchanged their native selfishness for 
the Divine unselfishness. Heaven is love to the 
Lord and the neighbor. Heaven is usefulness, 
not idleness. Heaven is wisdom increasing for- 
ever. Heaven is happiness in loving service to 
fellow men. Heaven is full of beauty — beauty 
of scenery, beauty of architecture unknown on 
earth, beauty of form and feature, beauty of art, 
of musical expression — but all these outward 
things are only symbols, understood by all, of 
interior and sublime thoughts and affections and 
good will to men. 

Heaven is various. It has grand and smaller 
divisions. "In my Father's house are many 
mansions." Each finds his place and loving 
spiritual use. Heaven is the perfect home. 

About the evil, I would gladly remain silent. 
There is a disposition to-day to question the per- 
manency, if not the very existence, of hell. It 
is quite true that there is no hell according to 



OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 77 

the old conception. There is no place of pun- 
ishment desired or created by the Lord, who is 
Love Itself. There is no such thing as being 
cast out into an evil and suffering condition 
against one's will. But there is such a reality 
as a real, human choice of evil. There is such 
a thing as a determination to be one's own 
master. There is a selfishness which one is 
unwilling to give up. And this is hell, here 
and hereafter. "He that is unjust, let him be 
unjust still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy 
still." Let him be; the Lord permits it, not 
desires it. 

Knowing, as we do, that the life of the uni- 
verse is God's life; knowing that His life is 
love, and unchanging love, even as our Lord. 
Jesus Christ has revealed it; knowing that His 
mercy is forever; we can safely trust Him for 
the final result, when once we have chosen to 1 
follow Him. He loves us all ; He will make the 
best of all. If there is any way by which the 
evil can be made willing to give up their evils, 
He will find it. And if we cannot think of evil 
as destroyed, we can at least think of the evil, 
world as coming into an orderly external con-^ 
dition, altho' at heart ruled by fears of the in-\ 
evitable punishment which unbridled self-love 
always brings upon itself, and which, when it> 
passes its set bounds, is, in the world of spirits, 
immediately detected and checked. 

The old idea of hell is gone or is fast going. 



78 RIGHT AND WRONG UNVEILINGS 

It is for us, as individuals, to see that the real 
bell is cast out while we live here, by obedience 
to the Divine laws of life — by doing justly, lov- 
ing mercy, and walking humbly with our God. 



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